


The Domino Effect

by Probity_Probe



Category: Winx Club
Genre: Diplomacy, Epic Friendship, Female Relationships, Government, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Probity_Probe/pseuds/Probity_Probe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bloom always knew that she’d make her parents regret making her Crown Princess. </p><p>Bloom discovers hidden consequences to Domino’s death and subsequent rebirth; in trying to make the planet competitive again, she comes up against the establishment, including her own parents.<br/>A slowly continuing series of vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Zenith was a cold and desolate waste in the days before recorded civilization, but it was a waste with vast reserves of metals and minerals and rare elements that almost didn’t exist anywhere else in the realms. History pointed to this, as well as possible alien colonization, as the reason for Zenith’s unprecedentedly advanced technology. At the beginning of recorded history, it was already well known that most planets in the Magical Dimension did not evolve life independently. Possible colonizers were suggested, with the nearby, now defunct  planet of  Urn’suk  as the likeliest choice, which left the people of Zenith in an awkward position. So one millionth of a galactic rotation ago, a mission was undertaken to the jungle of the forgotten planet, a useless obelisk was placed in the ground, and the roaming  bilgesnipe of the Urn’suk forests had another place to roost.”  

 

        “It wasn’t as if Zenith cared. Zenith was, in those years, in the middle of another technological revolution - the third of what would undoubtedly be many - as well as an emotional one, one that shook the established social mores of the planet to its core. It was a time of massive inflation, frantic development and urbanization, a growing disparity between the rich and the poor. A new, young upper class developed and had children, and it was their children - the second generation after the revolution - who emerged to challenge Zenith’s overall collectivist philosophy of restraint. These children called themselves the  Zenthient.   

They were largely wealthy, bored, iconoclastic youth; they rejected their parents’ ideas out of hand and romanticized the ideas of individualism, of emotional expression and outburst, of  fun,  and of nonacademic competition. They took the natural Zenith lack of sympathy to a new level, roaming the streets of the larger city in violent street gangs, fighting and carousing, not for any motive but pleasure-”   


Tecna raised her hand suddenly, and spoke without being invited.

_Uh oh_ , thought Bloom.

“Excuse me, Professor Aldebaran, but you’re making me question your objectivity. Calling Zenites 'naturally lacking in empathy' seems beyond the pale: and what would a professor of history know personally of youth culture on Zenith?” The professor shut her mouth once, then opened it again, a look of outrage on her face. 

Bloom, sitting in the spot next to  Tecna, tensed. She could tell from the lack of expression on Tecna's face that she was fuming on the inside.

“No, no, don’t-” she started to say, reaching out a hand, but then the lecturer opened her mouth pompously, and that was the end.

“Excuse me, I do believe that  I  am the lecturer, and you are the student, and I would like to be treated accordingly-”

It was humiliating, being kicked out of her own lecture hall, but even more so because it was done by her own guards.

* * *

Only when they were sitting outside on the front steps of the  Sparx  Lecture Hall, dusting themselves off and nursing various wounds, did Bloom realize that there was something she might not have known about  Tecna . Namely, that she had a breaking point. She opened her mouth to comment on this, but her friend stood up as soon as she did so and strode off, and Bloom was hard-pressed to keep up. 

“Wait! Are you angry?” 

Tecna  sighed through her nose and gave Bloom an evasive answer. Bloom rolled her eyes at herself.  _ Ask a stupid question… _

" Okay, so you're angry," Bloom conceded. 

  
"Yes," said  Tecna . “That so-called professor reflects badly on the University, but also on the city of  Sparx  and the royal family, and by extension  you,  Bloom.” 

She was walking fast again. They were passing through the shopping district of  Sparx , heading away from the blue and white university and towards the most prestigious addresses in the city, the homes of the  unlanded  nobles and the high-level civil servants, royalty in all but name. The buildings here were plainer, more square than those of the palace or University,  but still had plenty of that Domino curvature that the planet was so famous for. 

Bloom fell behind again. “You  wanna  stop?” she shouted. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”  

Tecna  pointed at the strip of shops that lined  Sparx’s  main drag. Many of them were closed and shuttered with  _For Sale_   signs in the windows. “See? Look at this. The planet’s confidence has been shaken, as well as that of investors.”

Silently, Bloom moved up beside her. 

“This is  not  a conversation that I want to have right now,” said Bloom. “I’m not ready to have it. That’s what the internship with the government is supposed to do. I need to learn how to be queen here if I’m going to get us through this crisis."

“What about the Domino/ Isotopia  alliance?” 

Bloom sighed.  Right, that.  Isotopia  was the planet that had control of practically all the banks in the magical dimension. She'd talked about it with her parents and listened to the  interrealm  talks on the subject, but they still hadn't gotten anywhere.   


“Well, they’ve sent some of our money back, but they refuse to adjust for inflation, which means that the money is worth about as much as the university is. Which is basically a fraction of its former value. 

And since  Isotopia  runs the banks – like  all  the banks – no one’s going to actually call them on it.” She sniffed. “Damn it, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Why’d you make me talk about this? It’s not like I’m the only one with problems, you know. Hey, you looked like you wanted to say something about Zenith earlier. What was it?”

They’d stopped next to a flowery window box and  Tecna  put her hand out to lean on it. She had a strange look on her face. Bloom wished they had been better friends at  Alfea , so she could read  Tecna's  expressions like she could Stella's. 

“I was going to say... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“But that’s not really what you were going to say,” said Bloom. “I think that you were actually going to tell me why you got so mad in the first place. And I think I know why. You're sympathetic to the _Zenthient._ ”She  mouthed the word a few more times, sounding it out. Hopefully,  Tecna  didn't notice that Bloom was pulling the guess straight out of her ass. 

Tecna looked down and rubbed her arm: odd body language for a girl who seemed to steamroll through life without ever being embarrassed. 

“It’s true. I never understood their motives or behavior, but they didn't deserve the treatment that Aldebaran gave them.” 

Bloom glanced around them. “Let’s get to the bar before the paparazzi catch up. God knows I’m going to catch hell tonight for what happened in the lecture hall, but let’s try to avoid it as long as possible, ' kay ?” They turned down a cross street into an avenue of colorful houses built in a style reminiscent of Bavaria. It was quite empty of adults, as might be expected on a day when the legislature was in session and the population was made up mostly of civil servants. However, what was more surprising was the total lack of children.   

“It’s eerie,”  Tecna  muttered. Bloom tried to divert the conversation: she did not want to get on the subject of the economy again. 

“So, what does  Zenthient  mean? I get the  Zen  plus the  sentient  part, but why the ‘ th ’ ?”

“The ‘h’ is to make the it sound as close to the name of the planet as possible, but also to create a play on words - move the ‘ i ’ in front of the ‘ th ’ and you have the word  _ senithet _ .”

Bloom shivered. “The translation spell is telling me that that’s the Zen word for ‘annihilation.’” 

Tecna  scoffed. “Even the translation spell is biased against Zenith! It’s more the word for ‘total war without restraint or compunction,’ and it’s also the word for our equivalent of chess.” She couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “The term is elaborate without being flowery; it’s precise and dramatic, very Zen. Or,” she frowned, “it would be if  Zenites  knew how to use humor properly.” 

They fell silent. 

They stepped around a column, walking south toward downtown. Bloom didn't bother to break the silence. She hadn't realized that  Tecna  had a sense of humor.   


“Nice circumlocution, by the way,” added  Tecna , referring to how Bloom had avoided acknowledging the fact that no children were to be seen anywhere in the city. She'd have to ask her parents about that later, once they were done scolding her, but she didn't want to talk about it now.

 “I hoped you wouldn’t notice. But it still worked, didn’t it? I successfully diverted the conversation.” 

“Hardly…”  Tecna  said, and began, happily to argue, totally missing the fact that she, once again, had been distracted. 

* * *

-”And that’s the story of how we got kicked out of the  Sparx  Grand Lecture Hall on the first day of our internship,” said Bloom to the rest of the  Winx . 

This was a rare time when they could all be together. In the aftermath of the rebirth of Domino and their graduation from  Alfea , most of their schedules were booked full. But today, they had all managed to call in sick from whatever they had been doing at the time, and now they were sitting in the VIP lounge of the  Marawīn , a pub in downtown  Sparx , laughing at how  Tecna  had taken down the pompous guest lecturer a few pegs – though  Tecna  seemed to object at Bloom's retelling. 

“It’s really quite important,” said  Tecna , frowning at Bloom, "she called the  Zenthient violent street thugs, as if that was all they ever were. ” 

Layla laughed. “She sounds like a member of the  Magix  Nativists.”   Those were a violent, isolationist group on  Magix  that lobbied yearly for banning 'foreigners' from the planet.

Bloom nodded at her girlfriend. “That’s no exaggeration. She totally deserved what she got, but still, I got thrown out on the steps by my  own guards . Getting my birth parents’ agreement on this whole internship thing was hard enough the first time. Now I’m not sure if I’ll ever be invited back.”

“Aww, Bloom-” said Layla. She knew how hard Bloom had worked to get her parents to let her sit in on the proceedings of the bureaucracy – Bloom had complained to her about it many nights. 

“I told you,” broke in Stella with her mouth full, “ practicing  to become a queen is completely not worth your time. Just wing it. That’s what I always do, and look how I turned out!” 

There was a beat before everybody started laughing. 

“No, really,” said Flora when she regained herself, still shaking slightly, “that’s horrible. I’m no expert, but that seems wrong.”

“Well, yes, because she was showing bias,” said  Tecna . “We need to be serious about this. Aldebaran is all wrong, it’s ridiculous, I don’t understand how she can be called a professor. Bloom, you should talk to your parents about  properly vetting  their guest lecturers, because she’s a complete  ᏄᏓᏅᏛᎾ -”   There was a slight hum in the energy around their table as the translation spell that enabled them to talk to each other failed.

       “Sorry, what?” said Musa, looking at  Tecna  with giant eyes. “I think the interpreter just blinked out.”

“ I  heard a translation,” said Flora.

“I heard ' sham',”  said Stella. Bloom looked at her friends curiously. So the spell still appeared to be working partially, it had parsed  Stella’s  sentence…

“Maybe the word doesn’t exist in our languages,” Flora suggested. Layla leaned against Bloom and Bloom leaned back, enjoying the warmth. The  Marawīn's  rooms were always too cold.   


“Mine switched over to  German,”  Bloom said. “And I don’t even think the German word was right.” It had been some weird mistranslated cognate. 

“The interpretation spell creates whatever your mind would recognize as the translation; it’s tailored to how you think,” said Layla. Bloom raised her eyebrows. 

“But then why would it fail for some people?” she asked. “Working like that, shouldn't it be fail-safe because it’s tailored to fit your mind?”   
“Well, it doesn’t fail, per se, but it does make odd mistakes,” offered Flora. She was wearing the slightly  teacherly  expression that she used when she was explaining something. 

“Sometimes, words can’t be literally translated into other languages, or even into words our brain recognizes. That means that we literally have no familiarity with even the  concept  the word represents.”    


Flora continued explaining, while the less studious members of the group began zoning out. 

“Really, have none of you guys read  _ Interplanetary Diplomacy, A History _ _?_ ” she finished. 

“Sounds  fascinating,”  said Stella, but her sarcasm was lost on  Tecna , who nodded in agreement.    
“It must be useful.”    


Flora smiled. “ Thank you,  Tecna ,” she said, and began explaining more, drawing in the interest of Musa and Layla as well. Bloom tried to listen, she really did, except she was too busy laughing behind her hand at Stella, who was taking advantage of the distraction to steal all of Flora’s pub mix. 

  
“Wow, I didn’t know that differences in language like that existed,” murmured Layla, and all the other  Winx  agreed except  Tecna , who had turned her attention instead to her plate, at which she had directed a stony stare. She seemed to barely be holding in a lecture. 

“Well, you know what this means, don’t you?” she said suddenly. All the girls groaned. Her lecture mode was worse than Flora’s and almost as bad as Bloom’s. 

“We’ve learned something useful about the nature of magic. It’s not infallible.” This was an argument that she’d been trying to push at them for  years . Only Flora nodded. Bloom looked at her in surprise. That was the last reaction she'd expected.

“I know," Flora told  Tecna . "You’ve been saying that a lot, haven’t you? That you have to have alternatives to magic. Technology,” she recited, “works in ways that an organic mind can learn to understand and predict with some accuracy. If you overtax technology, it breaks; if you treat it well, it can run for a long time. Magic works to fit the organic mind, but you can never tell when it will wear off or when there are exceptions.” 

        “Wow, Flora, you’re about to usurp  Tecna’s  place as the best memorizer,” said Stella, and  Tecna  turned her head sharply, looking as if she wasn’t sure what type of outrage to be feeling.

“All right, yeah, let’s skip over that.” Bloom wasn’t in the mood for confrontation. She smiled brightly at Flora.

“That’s amazing, Flora, where did you read that?”   


She smiled. “ An Esoteric History of Magic and Technology .”

“Of course esoteric is in the title,” Musa interjected.  

“But really, that sounds tough. What was reading  that  like?” Bloom broke in again, forcefully. The attempt was painfully transparent, but it made Flora grin anyway, and Bloom’s peacekeeping mission was successful. As they talked on about Flora’s reading habits, she forgot all about  Tecna’s  statements– facts that she could have done well to remember later. 

The meeting was over far too soon. Bloom watched her friends leave the pub to go their separate ways. It was back to Solaria for Stella, and for Flora the Domino Royal Greenhouse, and Musa and Layla were off to do Dragon-knew-what with bongo drums and maracas in the  Sparx  Conservatory of Performing Arts. Meanwhile, Bloom and  Tecna  had to get back to the university.  Tecna  needed to go back to her apartment to study before their next class, but Bloom planned to do some research before she asked her parents about the suspicious lack of children in the city. 

"I have something to show you before we go back,"  Tecna  said, and Bloom followed her out of downtown, toward their campus. 

They quickly passed through the edge of the  Sparx  University campus and reached the first university teleport point. It was a statue of some archaic hero from Domino’s history, set back in a small alley between buildings. It was probably meant for the students, so they could get to wherever they lived safely and quickly. 

[](http://tyleredlinart.deviantart.com/art/Fatecraft-city-tile-414583373) 

Tecna  strode quickly through the alleyway straight into a street of permanent housing. There were no dormitories; with magic, there was no need to live in the university center.  Instead, there was  a street of picturesque shops and houses built in a style reminiscent of Bavaria.  The houses were built directly on top of the shops, which were old enough to have signs with pictures instead of words. It was the sort of neighborhood that had been built centuries before and grown up over time, while being well-tended in between.  

 

“This is  Ascowayn  Annex,” said  Tecna , pronouncing the name in an impossibly lilting, poetic way that Bloom couldn’t follow. “It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city of  Sparx .” Bloom’s eyebrows went up. “Really? I’ve never been down here."   


“This street has been around for at least two thousand years, although when  Sparx  was just getting started, it was more of a dirt road in between plaster-and-wood hovels. So these cobblestones, though they are original, have only been around three-quarters of that time. The signs you see hanging from the shops are originals, too. They date from before most residents were able to read, so they represent their merchandise pictorially.”   

They walked down the street,  Tecna’s  footsteps clicking lightly on the stones. Bloom became more and more certain that she had never been here before. She also realized, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, that she definitely should have been. This place bled history from the marks on the ancient cobblestones to the smells in the air. Why had her parents kept this from her?   

“That’s a  Brobdingnagian  wine-tree,” said  Tecna , pointing at a fenced-in tree, heavy with fruits. “What looks like dirt on the cobblestones is actually remnants of a great fire that destroyed the part of the city known as  Tashghent , or in Earth terms, South Central.” Bloom felt her stomach sink.  Tecna  knew more about Bloom’s home planet than Bloom did. Would  Tecna  blame her if she knew how truly ignorant she was?  

There was a layer of soot that covered everything. It grew thicker as they walked south. Then they saw it in the distance, and the sinking in Bloom’s stomach turned into an all-out lurch - a gripping pain of foreboding that hit her again with every step. When they got close enough to the destruction, they stopped.    

Blocks upon blocks of city lay destroyed, the twisted remains of burned buildings lying forgotten, collapsed into themselves, into each other, into the street, blocking the walkway. The soot had settled long ago, but when the snow melted after the destruction of Obsidian and the rebirth of Domino, it had washed the stuff down to the streets, painting black tears down whatever buildings remained.   

“Did people live here, before?” There was a coldness in Bloom’s insides that had crept in gradually to replace the pain.  Tecna  just looked at her.

“Sorry. This is a residential neighborhood. Obvious. But  what happened?”   Bloom had to clench her fists hard to hold down the hysteria in her voice. It was strange. This wasn’t even really her planet. It wasn’t the place she was raised - and yet she felt a connection to a people she didn’t know, to hundreds of silent, nameless dead.   

“The Witches came through during the Ceremony of the Flame, which, in case you didn’t know, is your planet’s life ceremony. Everyone in the Capital was out on the streets to celebrate the renewing light of the Dragon Flame and the only weapons out on the street were ceremonial. They severed communication between the different cities with their spells and then transported the population into Obsidian.”  

“And what happened to this place here? To South Central  Sparx ?” She concentrated  hard and said the name, tentatively. “To  Tashghent ?”

Tecna  looked away. 

“Well, the witches swept in from the east, and  Tashghent ...fought back. The rest of the city was easy to subdue, but something about all this place…I didn't read to that part." She pulled her palmtop from the pocket of her synthesized-denim capris and pressed her thumb into a sort of...sensor? 

“Hmm,”  Tecna  said, slightly confused. “The  Realmweb Encyclopedia  says that  South Central was always not only a rougher part of the city, but that it was also home to a large population of witches. There’s more about it, but it says that to read more I have to have a subscription,  damn it.”

She looked furious and Bloom wondered why; she had plenty of money for a subscription or anything she wanted, really. As far as Bloom knew,  Tecna  had never lacked anything materially because her parents were high-level civil servants in her hometown,  Falyon . Had she been cut off or something?

“Never mind,” said  Tecna  and Bloom forgot that earlier bit of weirdness. “Look at  this!”  They both bent over what  Tecna  was pointing at  at  their feet: a black, powdery substance. It was different from the soot. It clung to the ground in a way that that was kind of reminiscent of something Bloom had seen before, once. They bent over and  Tecna  reached out –

A jolt of recognition struck Bloom: a memory, from their last year at  Alfea –a battle with Icy, made unfair by a trick that had made her temporarily powerless.

“Wait, don’t touch it!” she blurted just before  Tecna  made contact. She froze. 

 Bloom quickly conjured up a small container, telekinetically lifted about a teaspoon of the black stuff into her jar and sealed it with a wave of her finger. Then she was moving, streaking off toward the teleportation point which would take her to the gates of the palace.   


“I know what this is!” Bloom shouted as she ran off. “I have to see my birth parents!” 


	2. The Dragon Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bloom is coronated as Queen Designate. Short chapter.

I

Bloom plies her parents for answers, for help and eventually anything, really, until everything about the capital city makes her sick. They won't let her into meetings, they won't give her any details as to why, exactly, there was Dark Crow's Dust in Tashghent, an unknown witch's neighborhood, and why the place was totally destroyed. She keeps going back until one day, six weeks after the first time she'd been there, the entire city block disappears. No rubble, no debris, no dust: just wiped clean as if someone had Evanesced the entire distict.

 

When she goes back again, the city has put up fences and roofs over the bareness, plastered with signs that read "no entry" and advertise a new shopping center and apartment block. Bloom feels a chill up her spine, thinking of her parents. It's 2008, after all, the year of foreclosure and replacement.

 

She tries to phase through it anyway, but comes upon a ward too complicated for her to pass through, and ends up being expelled onto the pavement on her ass, with every one of her hairs standing on end.

 

Six months pass, and Bloom still doesn't have any more answers. She continues to attend classes and lectures, and sips tea with her parents once every tenday. She doesn't ask Tecna questions, because she knows they wouldn't be answered – and even if they were, Bloom suspects she wouldn't understand. There's something odd about all of this, but she doesn't ask. She suspects, though, that Tecna has been sleeping on Musa's couch lately, or possibly not even in the same suite, and she also thinks that Musa's experiment with bongos and the heat-zither of late have something to do with the falling out.  
 

So, six months hits her, and then her coronation date is literally staring her in the face: it's one night slash early morning away. And she's standing at the edge of the balcony, with her gazillion thread-count sheets wrapped around her, staring off into the near midnight and wishing to be anyone other than a fairy princess.

"Hey, are you angsting?" asks Layla from the bed, and it's like, wait – that's why she's wearing the sheets after all. Bloom smiles apologetically. "Guilty." She walks in, shutting the doors with a wave of her hand.

"Being royalty sucks. Take it from me. Come to bed?" Bloom turns and sees Layla's nude form spread out in front of her, long legs crossed atop a pile of pillows, dark hair tumbled across the mattress.

 _Oh, duh, that's why I have the sheet,_  Bloom recalls. She has no intention of giving it back, either. She slip-stumbles in the dark, finding her way toward the blue reflection of light in Layla's eyes, and falls to her hands and knees to sink her hands into her hair. Layla smiles up at her when they part, her face turning mysterious and speculative. She cuffs her hand around the back of Bloom's neck and pulls her down, where she collapses quickly. Layla kisses her, hard, and Bloom doesn't analyze much after that.

Somewhere in the middle, Bloom wonders, floating dizzily, what her handlers would do if they knew what she and her "Royal Confidant" did nightly.

She waits until she can catch her breath, until her muscles unclench and she comes back to reality, and Layla touches her softly until she is tired of the aftershocks and pushes her away.

"Want me to-" 

"-No, I'm fine." Bloom looks at Layla sideways, but relaxes after a while and rests her head on Layla's shoulder, admiring the way that the moonlight shimmers on her dark brown hair.

"Tomorrow you'll become the queen," Layla murmurs.

"Designate queen," Bloom corrects. Layla side-eyes her.

"Yeah, yeah. Now that you're seventeen on Domino, you get the title and a trial period. You're still the queen after three years." She sighed. "Fire-eaters are so weird."

"Fire-eaters?"

Layla grins. "That's what other planets call you dorks, because of your food. It also conveys a sort of perverse masochism and foolhardy risk-taking."

"Rude!"

Layla smiles at her. "Better than what some people call Andros. There's that stupid nickname, 'Tides,' as if it's some sort of wave pool, and then, of course, the 'bottom-feeder' insult." She looks thoughtful before she goes on.

"Melodians are called 'zoners,' or also, 'head-bobbers,' because of how they act at concerts, and well, you know-" She pantomimes a blowjob.

Bloom stares and Layla lets out a rather uncharacteristic giggle. Bloom tries to avoid spoiling this with a frown. Talking about planets is pushing them rather close to the subject they've been avoiding for months now. As they both know, there are always two halves to a queendom…

"Jokes notwithstanding, I realize that you read up on Domino's Inheritance cycle," Bloom hedges. "That was really thoughtful of you." Layla rolls away slightly. 

"Yeah, I know," she blusters, "I had to check them out at the Sparx library. The series comes in three big volumes and they weren't exactly interesting, either."

"I owe you, I guess," says Bloom. It comes out more earnestly than she intended. Layla suddenly looks thoughtful.

"Why would you owe me, though? I didn't do it because I was thoughtful." Layla looks up at Bloom.

"Shouldn’t I just have done it naturally because I'm…whatever to you?" She frowns. "See, that's the problem," (Bloom cringes automatically) "I just don't know what we're getting out of this, both of us. I don't know what we want." Layla looks at Bloom and for once, she, the estranged princess, strong-but-silent, is totally articulate and Bloom utterly struck dumb.

And apparently idiotic, too, because her next words are, "Well, why do we have to define it?"

Layla raises her eyebrows. "Well, all I know about it this is that I've been sneaking in and out of your bedroom for months with that teleportation medallion, and I think one of your so-called 'aides' is getting suspicious, whatever we are or aren't. You'd better check up on that." She rises to a sitting position and gets off the bed, grabbing her clothes and beginning to slip into them.

"Wait, you don't have to leave," Bloom starts to say, but shuts up when she realizes how disingenuous that sounds.

Layla sighs. "Yeah, I really do. Your parents will be thinking about an heir soon, and so will you if you're smart. If you're going to do it – be the Dragon Queen– you'll have no place for me." She looked away from Bloom. "And I'll have none for you."

Layla turns to go, and Bloom's heart is suddenly racing.

"Wait," she says. "I may not be ready, and I'm not sure of what I'm going to do. But I know that I want a life that I can share with you. Please…don't give up on this. I really…I think…" Why, why is it so hard to say?

 

Layla looks at her for a long moment, and then leans close, kisses her for what seems like an eternity until it ends. Hope flashes inside Bloom that maybe, maybe, she hasn't fucked this up irrevocably.

"Come back any time you like," she says. Layla gets to the balcony and transforms. Bloom pulls the sheet around her and watches the fractal shimmer of her transformation, and the following dark glow of the glamour she places around herself.

"Wait, you're flying out?"

"Yeah, to test my hypothesis. Watch your aides carefully, okay?" She says this over her shoulder, and then launches herself off the balcony and disappears one millisecond after calling, "Good night, Dragon Queen!"

"Designate," mutters Bloom, staring after her before she shuts the door and goes back to bed.

II  
The morning dawns a bloody red.  
Bloom wakes on her own as the sun rises, hours before the ceremony, and bathes and dresses alone. She opens her chamber door to find that nothing has collapsed in her absence, aside from one very embarrassed aide who had been spying with her ear against the wood. The ladies-in-waiting take her to a dressing room where they hustle and fuss about her. As soon as the head aide walks in, she looks at Bloom very closely, as if she could be hiding Layla in a pocket.

Bloom makes a mental note to tell Miriam that her medallion is malfunctioning, just in case, but now all the girls – all her age and pretty in the same way Layla is, what a coincidence– begin to primp her. They dot her wrists and ankles with a rich, snooty 'ancient anointment' (Bloom doesn't tell them that it smells exactly like patchouli). They dress her in the silken-but-lighter-than air yellow slip of the Shaan, the green robe of the Babahoud, her mother's nation, and the red-gold-black phoenix-feather coat, the symbol of the Valar, her father's nationality, and the one currently in power. All three of the greatest states of Domino, unified.

 

The ladies-in-waiting busy themselves around her face, taking out pigments that she has never seen before, nor has chance to name, and they paint her lips and her eyes, making her into a fierce version of a phoenix whom she barely recognizes as she watches in the mirror. One girl braids her hair while another dots red carmine onto her forehead with a special stamper; three small bursts across her brow. When she is dressed in the ceremonial shoes, armed with the ceremonial knife, and there is just enough bitterblue in her braid, a minister calls for them and the girls open a secret door in the wall. They let her through, bowing, and she is in the ceremonial crowning room. She tries to take Stella's lessons into mind as she walks, keeping her head held high and her nostrils flared (hopefully not too widely this time).

Her gaze slides past endless relatives and court lowlies to rest on her friends, sitting together at a front bench, dressed in varying shades of red. Stella catches her eye and winks. Tecna nods at her gravely, and Musa, on the other side of her, wiggles her eyebrows. She blinks rather hard when she sees Flora, whose face is bathed in happy tears. Then she sees Layla and almost stumbles. She is looking straight at Bloom, eyes wide and glistening.

Bloom catches sight of her reflection in a gigantic gold-framed mirror placed at the back of the room, and it helps her catch herself before she can fall. She reminds herself to thank Stella for that later. 

The coronator (or whatever) comes out. She's got at least seven hundred years on Bloom; she's wizened and bony, but magic crackles for several feet around her ceremonial cloak. Here is a woman who easily could have led the planet had she not turned to priesthood. Bloom bows low.

"Rise, novitiate. Pledge the sacred words of allegiance, Bloom of Valar."

Bloom unbends and looks out at her friends, and then at the mirror so she has some reassurance that she's still standing upright.  
"I pledge my magic," she begins, except she's not using the words of English transformed into Dominian Common. She's speaking the actual words, Ancient Dominian sounding raspy and quiet, but the magic in them makes them resound and echo as if through empty halls.

 

Sa iblem Winx votre     I pledge my magic

Chor valar matrend     to defend this state

Chor domino doltre     to protect this planet

Von Winx la Saana     by the magic of the Great Dragon

Von winx la sa             by the magic in me

Sa iblem morghulis    I pledge to the death

Dohaeris ifna.             Its servant to be.

 

She says them in a ringing voice that barely cracks at all, and when she's done, a crackle of fire and a wisp of smoke wind their way around her head. Her nose fills with the smell of ozone.

"Kneel as novitiate, and rise as Queen," the priest says, and she gets to her knees as the waiting girls come up to her, holding a crown that sparkles like flame. They place it on her head, and, for a moment, it feels as though she cannot stand. The look on everyone's faces is expectant, and she trembles before the instant passes and she rises to her feet. 

She seems to have what they're expecting, thankfully:  they rise as she does, hailing her in one voice. Her attendants grab her then and she is shuttled  onto a sedan chair and borne through the crowd, into the streets, still hearing the chants echoing behind her. The crowds are roiling, wild with almost single-minded joy or something, and they all have one thing to say:

"Allunar Bloom, Saana Domina!"

Or – "All hail Bloom, the Dragon Queen!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is slightly more sexy and more emotional than what I write usually in public and private. You already knew that there are non-canon pairings in this story. Definitely not for anyone not a fan of fandom deconstruction.


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